LAS CRUCES, N.M. — The Wildcats saw opening match struggles in their first appearance of the Borderland Invitational, falling to the Arizona Wildcats from the Big 12, 3-0.
The Wildcats from Tucson took down ACU in straight sets, 13-25. 23-25 and 9-25.
"We played an athletic and talented team in Arizona," head coach Ijeoma Moronu Alstrup said. "Unfortunately, we were only able to play our style of volleyball for one set of the match, but it did show us that when we play ACU volleyball we can compete with anyone."
Overall, Arizona who continued their unbeaten streak dominated the net and service line. Arizona finished the match with 11 blocks to ACU's three blocks, while Arizona held the ace advantage 6-0.
Another area where the Wildcats struggled in the match was hitting. ACU did finish the match with 25 kills, but they also had 27 errors and went on to finish the match hitting -.021 percent. Meanwhile, Arizona had 33 kills in the match while hitting .218 percent.
Bright spots for Wildcats included senior Bryley Steinhilber's eight kills, followed by Hannah Gonzalez's five kills and Sasha Stotler's four kills. Izabelle Larson and Avery Thaler led the way on the net with three blocks each. Madeline Guffy led the offense with 12 assists while Sydney Payne added nine assists.
As for the Wildcats' back line, Larson led the way with nine digs while libero Sara Carrizales had seven of her. The team as a whole finished with 32 digs.
"Sara had a solid match on both sides of the ball and was awarded with the MVP vote from the team," Moronu Alstrup said. "Offensively, Hannah G. did a great job of staying involved and Sasha Stotler took a lot of really great swings from the right side of our court. We're looking forward to our next match and working to play more consistent volleyball every time we step onto the floor."
Up next, the Wildcats played tournament host New Mexico State in the Pan American Center at 8 p.m. CT. You can watch tonight's match live on ESPN+ or follow the team on social media on Instagram, X, Facebook and acusports.com.
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